Page 10 of Ice King

They should know we wouldn’t eat dogs. They were our own kind. Even teasing about such bullshit was a no-no.

Sure, things had gotten a little easier over the years once the dangerous deeds were debunked, but we still lived in the shadows. Then one man had made it all possible for wolves to want more.

Saint Masters.

A true savage on the ice, which was why I’d followed his career, every move and how he handled the press, which continued to hound him. Both he and his brother were the darlings of the NHL.

I had to do the man proud. I was a shifter, not a goddamn werewolf like half the humans continued to spout off. That’s why this season was so important. Nothing could fuck it up, especially some trumped-up human injury.

So my buddies and I performed a little choreographed dance on the ice so to speak, setting me up to take the perfect shot.

When the puck slapped against the wood, I leaned in and snapped my wrist, pulling the stick to the perfect height in the air.

I’d controlled the puck alright, but not with any shifter techniques. Just with human brawn and my father’s encouragement over the years.

As the Dominator did his best to stop the puck from getting by him, nothing could stop the Wolfman in action.

The second the net was snapped from the force I used, the entire arena also heard a loud popping noise coming from my shoulder.

A spilt second before anguish rushed down my arm, tingling my fingers. The pain was so intense that before I knew it, I dropped to my knees, skidding across the icy surface. When I came to a hard stop only a couple of feet from where the coach was standing with his arms crossed, I had a bad feeling I’d just pulled my last stunt.

“Jesus Christ. What the fuck, man?” Zane Johnson roared from behind. He wasn’t called the Showman for nothing. Sure, we were friends; he was a guy who’d barreled onto the scene not expecting to face a town filled with strange creatures. He’d adapted to the campfire stories that were little more than boasting events, even creating a few of his own.

As if he’d ever had any experience facing a wolf in the wild.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t up for taking every opportunity to fuck with me, sharing my inadequacies across every social media platform. The rivalry had taken hold, puck bunnies comparing the two of us.

Who was stronger.

Faster.

Who had the bigger cock.

After exhaling, I stood, determined to shake it off.

By the time I glanced into my coach’s eyes, I could tell my initial evaluation of the situation had been correct.

I was fucked.

“Kendrick. In my office. Now.” With that, he glared at each and every member of the team, locking eyes with them before turning and walking away with the calm of a man on a mission.

Well, shit. His voice was dangerously calm, lacking any concept of emotion. I’d been on the team long enough to know what that meant. He wasn’t buying anything I was selling. When he was finally out of sight, my body sagged from the weight of being caught and of the heat in my shoulder, a dull but constant throbbing that wouldn’t go away. Even my ribs continued to ache.

A slight cracking sound drew my attention away from yet another round of self-pity. When I looked down at my stick, I snarled in response seeing the long crack that had developed.

Finn rolled up beside me, glancing at my hockey stick. “What did that twig ever do to you?”

“Fuck. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Why the fuck wasn’t I healing? It was ridiculous. When I was a kid and had toppled off the steep ridge on a riverbank, tumbling onto the rocks below, I’d broken my arm in two places. Within a week, there had been no evidence of the break.

Yeah, well, maybe the reason was that I’d shifted, my wolf DNA able to provide healing. How long had it been since I’d returned to my natural born state? Long enough the thought no longer appealed to me like when I’d been a child. By the time I was old enough to understand I was part wolf, part human, I’d begged my father to be allowed to shift. I’d craved running through the woods with a total sense of freedom.

Even then, my father had warned me that with our family’s shifting abilities came great power and significant need for self-control. In other words, I’d been forced to choose selectively when or if I should shift. The times had become more infrequent as I’d grown older.

For a solid reason. Fuck, no, I wasn’t going down that road, although the horrific nightmare had dragged me there.

The dream a few nights before tumbled into the forefront of my stressed-out brain. It had been so vivid, so… real. Then the mud stuck between my toes. I’d seen no evidence of where I’d been the morning after, which bothered me even more than the graphic details lingering in my mind even now.

The combination of being unable to heal and the damn dream wasn’t only unusual. The situation could become critical. Sadly, I didn’t know how or why. Maybe a private conversation with my father was in order.